"IN PLAYHOUSE AND IN PARK ABOVE THE REST."
It was summer once again, the season of roses and nightingales, and
London, generally empty at this golden time of sunshine and flowers,
was, in this particular year of 1727, filled to overflowing with all
those privileged people who had anything to expect from Court favour.
A new reign had begun. Suddenly, without a moment of warning, the Prince
of Wales found himself king. He emerged in an instant from the shadow of
paternal disfavour to the full blaze of regal power.
Strange, dramatic even, that death of the old King, lying stark and cold
in that very chamber in which he was born--strange to awfulness that
wild drive through the summer dust and glare, the stricken King refusing
to let his chariot be stopped for succour or rest; dozing in the arms
of his faithful chamberlain, murmuring faintly in a brief moment of
consciousness, "All is over with me;" gasping out with his last
struggling breath, "Osnabrück, Osnabrück," to slavish courtiers and
attendants who dared not question that kingly command: although his
omnipotent majesty the King of Terrors rode shoulder to shoulder with
their royal master. And thus in the deep of night that death-chariot
arrived at Osnabrück, and the old bishop, Ernst August, clasped the cold
hand of his royal brother.
The King died on Sunday, the 11th, old style, and the news reached Sir
Robert Walpole at his dinner-table in Chelsea on Wednesday, the 14th.
Quick work for the express who brought the tidings, in those days of
villanous roads and sailing vessels. Sir Robert was said to have killed
two horses between Chelsea and Richmond in his ride to the princely
palace, doubtless a harmless exaggeration of good Gossip History. He
received but scant civility from the new King--aroused from his
customary after-dinner nap by the pleasing intelligence of his father's
fatal apoplexy--and was sent straight off to Chiswick, to take his
directions from that dull, precise, and plodding politician, Sir Spencer
Compton. The statesman thus curtly dismissed, the new King and new Queen
scampered post-haste to their house in Leicester Fields, where no sooner
was the news public than the square was filled with a seething mob,
huzzaing for King George II., whilst the long suite of reception-rooms
was thronged with courtiers and sycophants, male and female, all bowing
down to the new Panjandrum, and all turning their backs upon poor Sir
Robert, whose fall seemed a foregone conclusion to the meanest
apprehension; for had not everybody about the Prince's person heard him
talk of his father's prime minister as a rogue and a rascal for whom the
Tower would be only too comfortable a prison-house? But while the giddy,
light-thinking crowd rushed to Leicester Fields, to slaver King George
and Queen Caroline, some of the deeper calculators paid their court to a
lady who was deemed a better mark for service and flattery than either;
and that was Mrs. Howard, the new Queen's very submissive waiting-woman,
and the new King's titular mistress, who was naturally supposed to rule
him and to be as able to turn on the fountain of royal favour as ever
Barbara Palmer or Louise de Querouailles had been in the easy-going days
of good old Rowley.
"Strange how thoroughly beside the mark these simple souls all were,"
said Tom Philter, who by a kind of fox-like slyness always contrived to
be on the right side. "They fancied that because that deaf and stupid
middle-aged lady was the King's mistress she must needs be more powerful
than his wife, although Queen Caroline is indisputably the finer woman
by almost as wide a superiority as she is the cleverer. They concluded
that the illicit tie must be the stronger, inasmuch as vice is generally
pleasanter than virtue; and they did not take into consideration that
our old sins are often as wearisome as respectability itself. I happened
to know that in his Majesty's estimation Caroline's little finger is
worth Mrs. Howard's whole body, and it was to her I dedicated my volume
of odes and epigrams, 'Horace in a Periwig,' while she was Princess of
Wales."
"It was a worse mistake to suppose that the new King could afford to
dispense with the services of the greatest financier of modern times,"
said Durnford, who supplied occasional papers to the journal for which
Mr. Philter was scrub, hack, and paragraph-writer, and who dined now and
then at the Roebuck in Cheapside, a well-known Whig tavern where Philter
spent much of his leisure, and where he heard most of the news which he
was wont to attribute to far loftier sources. After all, it matters
little whether a journalist gets his news at first, second, third, or
fourth hand, so long as the facts he records can amuse and interest his
readers. The more various the relaters of a story the more embellished
the narrative.
"Ay, that was indeed a mistake. Yet if Sir Spencer had but had a little
more gumption, he might have formed a new Cabinet with Townshend and
Chesterfield, and sent Robin to the Tower. He let his opportunity slip;
Sir Robert got the Queen's ear, and now his usefulness in the adjustment
of the Civil List, by which both King and Queen get a larger income than
any of their predecessors, has made George and Caroline his obliged and
humble servants for ever."
"What, sir, you would insinuate that Sir Robert Walpole has bought his
King at the expense of his country?"
"O, he was always good at buying the votes and consciences of common
folks; but it is not often a minister has so good an opportunity of
giving a fancy price for his King. It was pleasant to hear Sir Robert
plead his Majesty's increasing family and the high price of provisions
as a reason why the Commons should be liberal."
"And the only opposition was from Mr. Shippen--Downright Shippen, as
Pope called him--the Jacobite who ventured to describe the late King as
a stranger to our language and constitution, and was sent to the Tower
for his insolence," said Durnford.
"Well, there is one to whom his late Majesty's fatal apoplexy--caused,
Dean Swift tells me, by a melon--has dealt a death-blow, one whom I
could almost pity, unprincipled and shifty as he has ever been."
"Do you mean Bolingbroke?" asked Durnford.
"Whom else could I mean? The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind.
Assuredly he has quite as good a right to that description as Bacon ever
had, though Pope, who adores him, would never believe it. How
marvellously does his career illustrate that old vulgar saw which tells
us honesty is the best policy! Never did Nature and fortune so smile
upon a man as upon Harry St. John, who was Secretary at War at twenty,
and Secretary of State at thirty, who had the ear of his Queen and the
admiration of all England, and might have kept both could he only have
been honest. Twice has death ruined his schemes when they were ripest.
He had plotted to bring over the Chevalier, had the Stuart succession in
his pocket as it were, the Queen on the very point of recognising her
brother's claim; and lo! Death seizes his royal mistress, and grins at
him across her shoulder. Again, but yesterday, when, after years of
exile, still as keenly ambitious as in his brilliant youth, he had
bought her Grace of Kendal's favour, and had his foot planted, ready to
throw that stout wrestler Robin, again grim death intervenes and reduces
the Duchess to a cipher: and Lady Bolingbroke's hand-over of eleven
thousand to the Duchess's niece has to be written down as a loss in the
St. John ledger."
"O, but Bolingbroke got something for his money. But for that bribe to
Lady Walsingham he might never have been able to come back to England,
nor his wife, Madame de Vilette, to get her fortune out of Sir Matthew
Decker's clutches, who pretended that, as Lord Bolingbroke's wife, her
money was forfeited to the Crown under her husband's attainder.
Whereupon Madame swore she was not married to his lordship, though all
her friends knew she was; a perjury for which the banker should at least
bear half the lady's punishment in Tartarus, whether it be vulture or
wheel."
"My Lord Bolingbroke is not the only person who has lost by the old
King's fatal apoplexy," said Philter. "There is the divorced Lady
Macclesfield's daughter, brazen, beautiful Miss Brett, the only
Englishwoman whom his Majesty ever condescended to admire, a regular
Spanish beauty, black as Erebus, and with a temper to match. But no
doubt you know her."
"I have seen her," said Durnford.
"That poor young lady loses a coronet. She was to have been made a
countess on the King's return from Hanover, and she gave herself the
airs of a queen in anticipation of her new dignity. And now death blasts
her hopes; but as she is a fine woman with a fine fortune, I make no
doubt she will find some convenient gentleman to marry her before long."
* * * * *
The new reign gave an impetus to the world of fashion which made that
dazzling globe spin faster on its axis. There was a growing recklessness
in expenditure among the aristocracy, albeit his Majesty King George II.
was reputed the meanest of men, with a keener passion for counting his
guineas than ever prince had for spending them; as economic a soul as
that sturdy Hohenzollern, King Frederick William of Prussia, who had so
clipped and pared and diminished the pay and pensions of courtiers, and
the profits of Court harpies of all kinds, a few years ago when he came
to his kingdom. King George could scarcely cut down his expenses with so
free a hand, seeing his privy purse had been so well filled for him;
and Queen Caroline was a woman of cultivated mind and catholic tastes,
the disciple and correspondent of Leibnitz, the patroness of Berkeley
and Swift, the bosom friend of John Lord Hervey, and was disposed to do
things in a grand style.
The Duchess of Kendal retired to her house near Hounslow, and mourned
her royal lover in solitude, haunted by a raven in whose material
presence her sentimental fancy recognised the spirit of the dead King.
The younger Court was the focus of wit and beauty; Lady Hervey, Mrs.
Campbell, _née_ Bellingham, the Duchess of Kingston, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, Swift, Gay, Hervey, Carteret, sparkled and coruscated there.
That Court atmosphere pervaded the fashionable life of London.
In that world of fashion and folly Lady Judith Topsparkle shone with
ever-increasing brilliancy, with ever-widening notoriety. She had
chained the young French wit Arouet to her side, like a falcon on a
lady's wrist, and held him captive. She had the grim Irish Dean for her
friend and confidant. Bolingbroke swore he adored her only a little less
than his wife: and Lady Bolingbroke, who knew her lord's weakness for
beauty, looked on with indulgence at those public coquettings which were
too open to mean mischief. She knew that with her brilliant Harry
gallantry might still prevail; but passion was a thing of the past. Had
she not compared him to the ruin of a Roman aqueduct? A noble monument,
but the water had long ceased to flow! Better that dear Henry should be
composing epigrams or paying elaborate compliments to a frivolous young
woman of rank than that his volatile fancy should be straying after an
orange-seller, or some expensive Miss of the Anna Maria Gumley
type--that insolent beauty who was said to have been once on the best
possible terms with Harry St. John, and who was now the wife of Harry's
friend, William Pulteney.
Mr. Topsparkle saw his wife's surroundings, and made no complaint. Among
so many admirers there was no suspicion of a serious lover. It pleased
him that when the French wit had refused his much-desired company to
some of the finest houses in London, he was to be found in Soho
Square--that Lord Bolingbroke would post all the way from Dawley, and
go back after midnight by a dark road, in order to dine with Lady Judith
and her set; it pleased him that Swift should glower and grumble in
front of his hearth, pretending to despise all mankind, yet at heart the
supplest courtier of them all, cringing to Lady Suffolk and fawning upon
the Queen, negotiating the gift of a poplin gown to that royal lady with
as much pains as if it had been the treaty of Hanover, hoping,
despairing, plotting, hating, with a fiercer passion than is common to
common men. Before Swift's scathing tongue and Swift's awful frown, even
Lady Judith bowed her lofty crest. She fawned upon him, as he fawned
upon the Queen and prime minister, and as the dog fawns upon his master,
conscious of an undeniable superiority. With Voltaire she might presume
to trifle--that light mocking nature of his encouraged trifling; but
with Swift she was ever serious. And the Dean was himself of an
unusually gloomy temper at this time, dangerous alike to friend and
enemy, sparing no one with that bitter tongue of his, finding no
pleasure in the things that pleased other people. Lord Bolingbroke said
'twas his tenderness of heart which made him such a savage. He was
plunged in gloom on account of his sweet companion and _protégée_, Mrs.
Johnson, who was slowly sinking into the grave.
"Which he has dug for her," said Voltaire, who knew the story. "I do not
wonder that your famous Irish wit has his dark moments, or that his
thoughts sometimes waver between the woman whose heart is broke and the
woman whose heart is breaking. I am quite ready to admit, with his
lordship and Mr. Pope, that Swift is a staunch friend, and the cleverest
squib-writer in Europe: I prostrate myself before a genius greater even
than Rabelais; but I cannot esteem him a generous lover."
"Do you not think he may have suffered even more than these simple,
tender-hearted creatures, who were too officious in their love and too
feeble in their sorrow?" speculated Bolingbroke. "I doubt that great
heart of his has been wrung in many a silent agony. He loved Stella from
her childhood with a protecting fatherly affection--"
"I always mistrust fatherly affection in a man who is not a father,"
interjected Voltaire.
"And if his fancy sometimes trifled in playful endearments," continued
his lordship, "as even a father might trifle with his best-beloved
child, I doubt if he was ever betrayed into a direct avowal of love. And
then, touched and flattered by Vanessa's worship--"
"His fatherly affection found another daughter in the amiable heiress, a
daughter at whose table he dined agreeably two or three times a week,"
said Voltaire. "Your Dean had ever a thrifty mind. I remember, my lord,
your capital story of trapping him into paying for an inn dinner--how
his reverence resented the bite. And he found new endearments and a new
name for this wealthy Dutch lady, and somewhat neglected his elder
daughter in her favour, and wrote a poem to celebrate their learned
loves, and fooled the innocent fond creature into the belief she was to
be Mrs. Dean--only to enlighten her with savage bluntness one day when
she had dared to interrogate her rival, wishing with a natural curiosity
to know which of them had the strongest claim upon Cadenus. He frowned
her into an ague of terror that ended in her untimely death, and so
freed himself of an importunate adorer; but I doubt if he has been
particularly happy since that last look from despairing Vanessa. Should
Providence ever give me such fond affection from an intelligent woman I
would be her slave, would endure her every caprice, bear with her even
were she the veriest termagant. There is no limit to the debt of
gratitude which a man of honour owes to the woman who loves him."
"Would you have gratitude go so far as to wink at infidelity?" asked
Bolingbroke, possibly with some lingering remembrance of the fair and
faithless Clara, whose inconstant soul could not keep true even to Henry
St. John in his noontide of youth and wit and beauty.
* * * * *
Lady Judith admired Swift and adored Voltaire. That airy sarcastic
nature suited her temper to a marvel. The Frenchman's presence gave a
philosophic air to her receptions. The talk was of Descartes and
Berkeley, of Leibnitz and Newton, and of those smaller spluttering
lights, forgotten now, that transient coruscation of learned atheism,
which illumined the earlier half of the eighteenth century. The talk
was of Moses and the opera-house, wavering betwixt legislation from
Sinai and Heidegger's latest prima donna: and Judith had something to
say about everything, were the subject ever so lofty and remote from
woman's scope, or so low as to be tainted by foulness and unfit for a
woman's discussion. Her arrogance attacked the highest themes; her
audacity recoiled not from the lowest. Her manners had the light
insolence of Millamant, secure in sensuous charms and mental
superiority.
Mr. Topsparkle looked on and admired. Yes, this was the woman for whom
he had sighed, having long ago outworn that kind of love which requires
reciprocity in the object. Lady Judith's calm civility and ladylike
tolerance sufficed him, her airs and graces and elegant insolence to all
mankind enchanted him. So long as she was faithful, and injured his
self-esteem by no preference for another, he was content. She might not
love him, but she was the chief sultana of his harem, and had so far
conducted herself as a sultana without speck or reproach.
He had heard old stories about Lavendale: how he and Judith had loved
fiercely and fondly, made themselves the talk of the town for at least
three weeks, an elopement seemingly impending, a furious father
threatening direst vengeance, and much talk of coaches-and-six waiting
at street-corners on those moonless nights when London was abandoned to
darkness and the linkman; he had heard how they had quarrelled and
parted on account of Chichinette; and he was resigned to know that there
was this one romantic and even blameworthy page in his wife's history.
Knowing as much, he had been studiously civil to Lavendale, and had gone
so far as to invite him to Ringwood. It pleased that crafty soul of his
to have his _ci-devant_ rival under his roof, and to be able to watch
him keenly. He had so watched, and had seen nothing amiss. And now, as
this first season of King George II.'s reign wore on, Mr. Topsparkle was
content that his wife's former lover should make one in her cluster of
satellites, should hand her fan, or advise her play at ombre or
quadrille, at tray-ace or basset.
"My wife has a whole kennel of puppies perpetually sprawling at her
feet," he said one night to a circle of friends at White's
Chocolate-house, "of whom Bolingbroke is chief bow-wow, now that her old
admirer, Chesterfield, is at the Hague. Who would take that brilliant
trifler, Harry St. John, for Walpole's most malignant foe, and the
boldest conspirator that ever hatched treason; or who would suppose that
this modern Cincinnatus, who pretends to have renounced politics in
favour of hayforks, is in reality the chief of the Opposition, the busy
plotting brain of which Wyndham and the Pulteneys are but the
mouthpieces?"
* * * * *
At the opera and at the opera-house masquerades, Judith and Lavendale
were often together, but they were rarely alone. It would have almost
seemed as if anything more than the lightest flirtation must have been
impossible under such conditions. And yet under that light demeanour,
deep in the hearts of both of them, there glowed a passionate love; and
yet amidst that maelstrom of pleasure, that wild and wicked whirlpool of
cards and dice, and lascivious talk, and idlest vanity, and profligate
extravagance, to each one of these impassioned lovers it seemed as if
the world held only that one other--for Judith, Lavendale; for
Lavendale, Judith. That crowded, bustling outer world and all its
inhabitants showed shadowy as the throng of supernumerary witches in
_Macbeth_. In the constant intoxication of a passionate love, Judith saw
all faces dimly, heard all voices faintly, moved and spoke and smiled
and played her pretty part as woman of quality and fashion, with mere
automatic movements, doing the right thing at the right moment by mere
force of habit, as a creature too well brought up to err against the
code of politeness either by omission or commission. Never was she
lovelier in Bolingbroke's eyes than as he sat beside her at dinner one
summer afternoon, drinking deep of Mr. Topsparkle's choicest champagne,
and delighted at the idea that the graces of his maturer manhood had
power to captivate so charming a woman. And yet all the while it was as
much as Judith knew with whom she was talking, since her ears and eyes
and the fitful fluttering of her heart were all for him whose hand had
snatched and pressed hers surreptitiously in the little bustle at
entering the dining-room, and who now sat at the further end of the
table, pretending to be interested in an alderman's account of Sir
Robert Walpole's latest attack upon the privileges and liberties of the
City.
The company at dinner were numerous, including Lady Polwhele and the
Asterleys, Mrs. Asterley improved in manners and worldly wisdom by a
winter in good society, and by many very sharp reproofs from the
Dowager. Little Tom Philter had been bidden, as a man who must be
tolerated occasionally, lest he should spit venom at one's fair name in
the newspapers. Lady Judith was beginning to be sensitive about seeing
her name in print, and was growing monstrously civil to the Grub Street
fraternity. She had been written about and hinted at for her high play
and her passion for lotteries. She had been the subject--designated by
initials--of a ballad headed "_On revient toujours_," and she had been
told that Mr. Pope had hit her character off to the life in an essay now
in course of composition. The sketch had been read to privileged
friends, every word told; her virtues and failings were perpetuated by
that unerring touch which made mere words seem as round and fixed and
perfect as a statue in marble. This afternoon, while they were dining,
she taxed Bolingbroke with having seen and approved the satire.
"Dearest Lady Judith, do you think I could approve one word of
depreciation, were you the subject?" protested his lordship. "Our little
friend certainly showed me some lines--bright, incisive, antithetical,
in his usual style; for though he laughs at Hervey's seesaw, he is not
himself averse from the false glitter of antithesis--lines descriptive
of a modish beauty, Belinda married perhaps; but they could no more
represent you than they could embody a goddess. Who can describe the
undescribable?"
"I am growing accustomed to malevolence," said Judith, "and from little
men it gives me no pain. But I have admired Mr. Pope as a wit and a
genius, and I should not like to see myself lampooned by him."
"I will make him send you the page to-morrow, and it shall be cancelled
if you disapprove a single line."
"You are always chivalrous. I saw some verses of yours the other day,
addressed to some young person who seems to have been not quite a woman
of quality; and they are so pretty that I could but regret your lordship
had ever ceased to cultivate the Muses."
"I have found those famous ladies like other women, dear madam, mightily
inconstant. What lines of mine could you have seen, I wonder?"
The world-famous statesman, the masterly writer, smiled with the
gratified air of a schoolboy scribbler at this praise of his juvenile
verses.
"O, it was a mere bagatelle, an address to a lady whose Christian name
was Clara. The lines had the flavour of youth, and must have been
written ages ago. 'Twas the fervid feeling of the prose that pleased me:
'To virtue thus, and to thyself restored,
By all admired, by me alone adored,
Be to thy Harry ever kind and true,
And live for him who more than dies for you.'
I hope Clara was worthy of that tender appeal."
"She was not, madam. She was a--nay, I dare not tell you what she was;
but Henry St. John might have been a better man if Clara had been a
better woman. There is no such blight upon a young heart as to discover
it has given itself to an unworthy mistress; to love on, blindly, madly,
long after the object is known to be false and worthless; to hope
against hope, to forgive again and again, only to be again and again
offended; to accept every lie rather than face the horrid truth that one
is betrayed; to tear a false love out of one's heart as mandrakes are
torn from earth, with wounds and shriekings. Can the man who loves and
is loved by beauty and virtue ever enough esteem his own happiness or
his mistress's merit? I who have loved lewdness and deceit will answer
that he never can. His blessings are beyond and above all computation.
His gratitude should be as infinite."
The company were to repair to the new Spring Garden, otherwise Vauxhall,
soon after dinner, and the weather being exquisite for such excursions,
it had been decided that they were to go by water. Their chairs would
carry them to Westminster, and thence a barge would convey them to
Vauxhall. The excursion had been devised by Lady Polwhele, who was
always ready for any dissipation, and who spent as much of her handsome
income as she could spare from the gaming-table upon pleasure and fine
company. She had invited herself and her satellites to dine in Soho, and
she had invited Mr. Topsparkle and his guests to sup at Vauxhall, where
there were snug little arbours with curious signs--the Checker, King's
Head, Dragon, Royal George--where cosy little parties supped cheerily on
minced chicken and champagne or hung beef and Burton ale. Here, a few
years ago, the Mohawks had made many a raid, storming the arbours where
women were supping unattended, struggling for kisses with slender girls
or portly matrons, pulling off masks and rumpling silk hoods, smashing
punch-bowls and upsetting tables. Here Lavendale had been leader of many
a fray. But he was tamed now, and full of other thoughts as he sat in
the barge watching the sunset paint the river, while Lady Polwhele and
Mrs. Asterley talked at the top of their voices, and while Judith
pretended to listen to the honeyed tones of Bolingbroke or the vinegar
treble of Mr. Topsparkle, who was grumbling at the soft west wind which
breathed coolness along the rippling water, and threatened him with a
return of his rheumatism.
"You should not have come with us if you were afraid of catching cold,"
said Judith impatiently.
"Upon my word, you are vastly civil. You drag a man at your heels like a
spaniel to every foolish place of--no-entertainment--and then tell him
he should have stayed at home."
"'Twas Lady Polwhele made the party, not I."
"Where you go I must go," answered Topsparkle, in a lowered voice; "your
remnant of reputation must be cared for by somebody. You do nothing to
preserve it."
"Nor will _you_ maintain it by playing spy or gaoler," retorted Judith
scornfully. "Had you not better call a boat and go back to Westminster?
I shall be at home soon after midnight. I promise you not to elope with
Lord Bolingbroke. I have too much regard for his charming French wife."
"I am not afraid of your eloping--with Bolingbroke," said Topsparkle
grimly. He folded his roquelaure across his chest and leaned back
against the cushions, with the determined air of a man who does not mean
to be tricked by a coquette. Lady Judith was reckless, and her husband
was not so blind as he pretended to be, or as the town thought him.
Above all things he was watchful, but his watchfulness rarely avowed
itself as plainly as to-night. Judith glanced at him uneasily, wondering
at this little blaze of unexpected fire, this sudden spurt of jealousy
on the part of one who had so long seemed the personification of
well-bred indifference.
The stars were up when Lady Judith's party landed, stars above in a
clear summer heaven, and below the twinkling radiance of a thousand
lampions, tiny glimmering glass cups of oil in which burnt the feeblest
of wicks, and yet in those days esteemed a splendid illumination.
Perhaps the gardens, with their bosquets and little wildernesses--in
which 'twas said a mother might lose herself while she was looking for
her daughter--were all the pleasanter lit by those tremulous glowworm
lamps, mere dots of brightness amidst the shadowy leafage. For lovers or
for intrigue of all kinds they were ever so much better adapted than the
cold searching glare of electric lamps. That dimly lighted garden, with
its music of nightingales, was the chosen trysting-place of lovers, high
and low, fortunate or unhappy. Forbidden loves found here their safest
rendezvous; elopements and Fleet marriages were planned by the dozen
every night the gardens opened. Here adventurers sought their prey; and
here rich widows surrendered to penniless ensigns or cureless clerics,
third-rate actors or Grub Street scribblers, as the case might be. The
band was playing a _pot-pourri_ from Handel's favourite operas in the
gayest part of the garden, where the company who had no intrigues on
hand were parading with a stately air, fluttering fans, shrugging
shoulder-knots, and exchanging small-talk. Above those darker walks
where lovers strolled softly, the nightingales poured forth their
melancholy melodies, lovelier even than those of Handel. And in one of
these wilderness walks, between eleven o'clock and midnight, Judith and
Lavendale were gliding ghostlike among the shadows, her hand within his
arm, her head inclining towards, nay, almost resting against, his
shoulder.
"Let it be soon, love," he was pleading; "soon, at once, to-night, this
night of all nights, night for ever blessed, as that when Jove stopped
the sun--would I were Jove, for love's sake! Let us fly to-night.
Post-horses to Dover, through the summer night; how sweet a journey,
between fields of clover and budding hops, and the young corn waving
silvery under silver stars! I have travelled that road so often in
desolation, when I had only Nature to comfort me, that I think I know
every field and every copse. Let me make the journey for once in bliss,
with my beloved in my arms. Then to-morrow 'tis but to charter a cutter,
and across to any port we may settle upon; then southward as the
swallows fly, and as lightly as they. We would not stop till we came to
Cintra, where I know of a villa amidst orange and lemon trees, that is
like a bower in paradise. Glimpses of the sea shine up at one through
every break in the foliage, far, far below, wondrously beautiful. It is
a place where I have wandered for hours, thinking of you, in a rapture
of melancholy."
"It would be sweet to be there with you, dear love," she murmured, in
low languid tones.
His arm was round her waist, her head upon his bosom, and a nightingale
was singing close by, as if their love had made itself a living voice.
"It would be heaven, dearest," he answered eagerly; "why then should we
delay? Why should we not start this night?"
"For a hundred reasons," she said, freeing herself suddenly from his
encircling arm, and resuming something of her usual manner, the
self-possessed air of a woman of the world. "First, because I would not
make too great a scandal, and to fly from these gardens to-night with
all those people in my train--"
"Love, there _must_ be scandal whenever that odious tie be flung off,"
he urged; "and what can scandal matter in a society where almost every
other man or woman you meet is a rake avowed or a profligate in secret?
You will be worlds above the very best of them when you have broken
your bondage; a purer, loftier spirit, mated with him you love, wearing
no mask of hypocrisy, asking no favour of a world we both despise. Let
not the thought of scandal stop you."
"There are other reasons. For one, I cannot run away without my
clothes."
"Clothes can be bought anywhere."
"Not _my_ clothes," answered Judith lightly. "Do you suppose I could
live in any gown that was not made by Mrs. Tempest? She sent me home a
lutestring nightgown of the sweetest sea-green only yesterday. I must
take that with me whenever I go. You don't know how well I look in it."
"Incomparable, love, I am assured; like Venus Anadyomene with the green
shining water rippling over her round white limbs. Well, we will wait
for the lutestring nightgown, if needs must, and half a dozen pack-horse
loads of gowns and furbelows, if you will; only let our flight be
immediate. I can live no longer without you."
"And I scarce exist without you, dearest," she answered frankly. "I move
to and fro like a sleepwalker; I answer questions at random; I betray
myself twenty times an hour, were there any one shrewd enough to observe
me. I am lost, overwhelmed in the deep whirlpool of love."
"Let it be to-morrow night. I will have a coach-and-four waiting at the
end of Gerard Street--"
"Too fashionable, too conspicuous a spot."
"Or in the darkest corner of Leicester Fields. We can put on another
pair of leaders in the Kent Road, and then as fast as they can go to
Dover. You must find some way of getting rid of Topsparkle for an hour
or two."
"Not to-morrow night. That is impossible. He is to take me to Duchess
Henrietta's concert. He is very punctilious about these entertainments,
and has a passion for appearing in great houses with me."
"Run away from the concert."
"No, no, no, that were as awkward as from these gardens. I am thinking
of my gowns. They must be got off somehow in a wagon, sent as if they
were for Ringwood Abbey--old clothes to be worn out among rustics, I can
say--and you must tell me where to send the trunks; to some inn on the
Dover road, I suppose, whence they can follow us to France. My diamonds
I can take with me."
"Leave every stone of them behind you, dearest, if they are Topsparkle's
property."
"They are not. He gave them to me as a free gift."
"Dear love, I would as soon see you decked with serpents, like Medusa.
Leave your cit his dirty jewels and his dirty wealth. You and I can be
happy amidst our orange-groves without either. The fireflies are
brighter than your diamonds."
"What, part me from my famous jewels! Well, perhaps you are right. I
should hate to wear them, for they would remind me of the giver. I have
a set of garnets that belonged to my poor mother, which I verily believe
are more becoming, though they are almost worthless. And I can wear
_them_ with honour."
"I would sell my last acre to buy diamonds for that fair neck, if you
hanker after them."
"But I don't. You shall decorate me with orange-bloom. We will be
completely Arcadian in our paradise. And when we are tired of
orange-groves and sea-view, you can carry me to Rome or Vienna, or to
Turkey, like your wild kinswoman."
"You shall order me whithersoever you please. I will be as obedient as
the genius of the lamp in those newly-discovered Arabian tales we were
all reading at Ringwood last winter."
"Lady Judith, the minced chicken has been waiting for the last hour, and
we are all famishing," said a sharp voice at her ladyship's elbow, and
Mr. Philter tripped by her side.
"I apologise to the chicken, or rather to the company," answered Judith
lightly. How lucky that Lavendale's arm was no longer round her waist,
her head no longer reclining upon his Ramillies cravat! "Is it really
very late?"
"On the stroke of midnight."
"How delightful! the very hour for ghosts, and this dark walk would lend
itself to the habits of phantoms. Would we could meet some gentle
spirit!"
"You had better come to the King's Head, where the supper-table might
tempt even a ghost to become again mortal. There can be no gentler
spirit than champagne cooled with ice after the new mode. They are all
dying of hunger, and sent me to hunt for you. I was to bring you to them
alive or dead. I doubt if they cared which. Hunger is so horribly
selfish."
"I had no idea it was so late. The nightingales and Lord Lavendale's
witty discourse have beguiled me into forgetfulness."
They hurried to that gayer part of the gardens where the arbours
sparkled with wax candles and jewels and beauty, and where the air was
musical with laughter. All yonder had been silence and shadow: all here
was rattle and animation. Supper had begun at the King's Head, on Mr.
Topsparkle's insistance that they should wait no longer for his wife.
Lavendale and Lady Judith carried the matter off so lightly that there
seemed no room for scandal; but that keen observer, Tom Philter, noted
some ugly twitchings of Mr. Topsparkle's mouth and eyebrows.
Some airy shafts Lady Judith could not escape.
"What a glorious thing is a spotless reputation!" cried Lady Polwhele,
radiant and loquacious after her first half-bottle of champagne. "Had it
been Asterley and I, now, who had lost ourselves for an hour in those
dark walks where the nightingales sing so sweetly, people would have
been ever so ill-natured about us: but Lady Judith is like Diana, her
name stands for chastity. Even Lavendale's ill-repute cannot damage her.
How fares it with you and your Surrey heiress, by the bye, Lavendale?"
"Off, madam, done with like the old worn-out moons that doubtless go to
some rubbish-heap in the sky. She would have none of me."
"She was a foolish girl. She might do worse than marry an agreeable
reprobate like you. I swear reprobates are the pleasantest beings on
this earth. They flatter one's _amour propre_. One never need feel
ashamed before them. Fill me another brimmer, Asterley," said the
Dowager, holding out her glass, and leaning across the table with a
freedom of attitude which accentuated that absence of tucker whereof the
_Guardian_ had discoursed in mild reproof a dozen years before. That sly
humourist and gentle moralist, Joseph Addison, had vanished from this
earthly scene, and the tucker or modesty-piece, as he had called it, was
not reinstated; nor had either the manners or the morals of fashionable
beauty improved since the moralist's time.
Judith took the chair that had been reserved for her, and drank a glass
of champagne. Her throat was parched, her eyes were burning, her hands
icy cold. A few minutes ago and she had known no physical sensations.
She had been an ethereal essence, made up of fervid imagination and
passion's white heat, lifted to the empyrean; and now she was a woman
again, weighed down with the consciousness of guilty intentions,
burdened with the foreshadowing of shame. To-night she could hold her
head high, look down with scornful toleration upon the flighty Dowager
yonder, whose damaged reputation had been town-talk for the last ten
years: but what of the day after to-morrow, when she, the unapproachable
coquette, the universal tormentor, should be known to all the world as
Mr. Topsparkle's runaway wife and Lord Lavendale's mistress? Would there
be any mercy for her who had carried herself so proudly, allowing her
tongue to riot in ill-natured speeches and wanton scorn of the weak? Who
would spare her? She scarce knew which would be worse, the pity of the
women or the laughter of the men. Topsparkle had often told her the
gossip of the clubs. She knew how those generous creatures of the
stronger sex talk of the fallen among the weaker sex; how ruthlessly
they assail that frail sister who has suffered any flaw in the armour of
her honour; how much unkinder they are to the woman who was proud and
virtuous yesterday, and who sits apart in her guilt and misery to-day,
the Niobe of a slaughtered reputation, than to the hardened female rake
who leads half the town in her train and defies scandal.
_She_, Judith Topsparkle, could expect no mercy. She had had too many
adorers not to have a hundred enemies. Every fop whose prayers she had
rejected, whose sighs she had laughed at, would feel himself avenged in
her fall. Her shame would be the open delight of the town. Such a
thought for a proud woman was agony. And yet, with her eyes open, with
worldly knowledge and experience to show her the depth of the abyss into
which she was going down, she meant to give herself to her lover.
Deliberately, resolutely, she would put her hand in his and say to him,
"For good or evil, I am yours." It had come to this. Life was
intolerable without him. She had never ceased to love him. From the hour
of her first girlish vows that love had possessed her heart and mind,
had been growing day by day in depth and power. Separation had been one
long slow agony, a living death; reunion had seemed the renewal of life.
And their love had been fed and fostered by daily meetings. Mr.
Topsparkle's indulgence and the agreeable laxity of modern manners had
been fatal. The flame of that unholy love had mounted, blazed,
surrounded this impetuous woman like an atmosphere of fire. She lived
only to love and be loved by Lavendale.
Of her future as a dishonoured wife, as Lavendale's mistress, she
thought but vaguely. She could not see beyond the fiery present. She
could not sit deliberately down and question herself about the years to
come; how and where those years were to be spent, by what name she was
to be called, or what her old age--that age which should be
honourable--was to be like. She thought of the ignominy of the present:
she thought of the bliss of the present: but of the future, in that
giddy whirl of brain and senses, she could not think.
She and her lover had been interrupted by Mr. Philter before they could
complete their plans; yet she was not less resolved upon flight. In the
midst of the riot of the supper-table, amidst a fire of repartee from
Bolingbroke and audacious nonsense from Lady Polwhele, and the last town
scandal from Captain Asterley, and a meandering stream of childish
babble from his wife, these guilty lovers found time to whisper and plot
their treason against the husband, who sat in a corner of the arbour,
with his head against the wooden partition, and his eyes closed,
enjoying a gentle slumber after the champagne and chicken.
"He is to dine in the City the day after to-morrow," whispered Judith;
"that will be our opportunity. I shall be my own mistress that evening.
Stay, I have asked some women to play ombre, but I can swear I am ill
and put them off early in the afternoon."
"Then I will be with you as soon as it is dark--between nine and ten
will be safest--and take you on foot to the carriage, which I will have
stationed at some safe corner. Your trunks had better be sent to the
Bell at New Cross. I will find you a wagon and send for them at any hour
you name."
"It had best be about eight in the evening, when Topsparkle will be safe
in the City, drinking punch and hearing loyal speeches at the Guildhall.
How sound he sleeps! I have not often seem him doze after supper. He
generally seems the very incarnation of vigilance--a creature that knows
not what it is to sleep."
Lady Polwhele was rising hastily amidst a confusion of tongues. The wax
candles had burned low in their sockets, everything on the table had a
profligate air, as after an orgy: empty bottles, broken glass, crumpled
napkins, wine-stained table-cloth.
"Your lordship is simply incorri-corri-gibber," protested the Dowager,
lunging at the great Tory with her fan.
"Have a care, Lady Polwhele. Incorrigible is not an easy word to
pronounce at two o'clock in the morning."
"Yet you can say it, villain."
"I have always been noted for a sound head and a steady tongue."
"Faith, were your principles but as sound as your head you might be
Treasurer now instead of that lubberly Norfolk squire," said her
ladyship, somewhat thickly. "And then we should not all be given over to
the Muggites."
"Your ladyship forgets that I am a Muggite," remarked Lavendale
laughingly.
"No, I don't forget you, scaramouch. I never forget old friends"--with
more fan-tappings. "And I mean to trap you an heiress yet. You shall
marry bullion, Lavendale, as sure as I am one of the cleverest women in
London. Look at Asterley there. 'Twas I got him his City wife, and 'tis
I am training her for the Court and good company. See how sleek and
bloated my Benedick begins to look, fattened by the consciousness of a
full purse, as well as by the physical effects of a well-stocked larder.
But _you_ look lean and haggard, Lavendale. I prescribe an heiress."
"Wake up, Topsparkle," cried Asterley, anxious to stop his patroness's
loquacity. "The boatmen have had their night's rest, and the moon is
high. Put on your roquelaures, gentlemen, and you ladies wrap your
mantuas close round you. Even a July night is cold on the river."
"I have never found a July night too warm anywhere in this atrocious
climate," said Topsparkle, waking with a shiver. "The earth in this
latitude is only half cooked. There is no sun worth speaking of. 'Tis a
raw, bleak, uncomfortable world, invented for the profit of
woollen-drapers and furriers. Let me help you on with your mantua,
Judith, and then let us all get home as fast as we can. 'Twas foolish to
come here by water, but 'tis mad to return that way."
"Music and moonlight," murmured Lady Polwhele, with a maudlin air.
"Nothing in this world so delicious as music and moonlight. I hope you
brought your flute, Asterley."
"He has it in his pocket, your ladyship," vouched the buxom young wife,
who was passing proud of her husband's trivial accomplishments.
"The flute! Lord forbid!" cried Topsparkle. "We are sure of a fit of the
shivers, and it needs but Asterley's flute to give us the ague."
At last they were all out of the arbour, Lady Polwhele lurching a little
as she leaned on Bolingbroke's arm, and so down to the water-side and to
the gilded barge with its eight rowers, which slipped noiselessly from
the shadowy shore under the summer moon.
"The moon rises late, does she not?" asked Lavendale, looking up at that
silver lamp hanging in mid-heaven.
How pale he looked in that clear white light! how hollow and worn the
oval of his face! how attenuated those delicate features! Judith saw
only the love-light in those adoring eyes.
"The moon rises between eleven and twelve," replied Mr. Philter, who
always knew, or pretended to know, everything. It is so easy to be wise
in polite society. A man has but to answer with sufficient assurance and
a quiet air of precision to be believed in by the ignorant majority.